At the present time electric generators produce direct or alternating electric current by rotating looped wires in a magnetic field or rotating magnetic fields in looped wires. Wind power, water power and mechanical power produced by internal combustion engines turn electric generators to produce electricity. Nuclear power uses heat to boil water to produce steam to turn a turbine that turns an electric generator. Electric output never equals the input horsepower. Solar power uses photons from the sun falling on PN junctions to convert photons with energy of 1.59 electron volts into electrons by providing an electromotive force at the PN junction, allowing electrons to cross thereover.
At the upper edge of the atmosphere a one square meter solar cell has a potential irradiance of 1367 watts per square meter. However, with an efficiency factor of ten percent, the useable energy output is 136.7 watts. At ground level in the middle of July on a clear, cloudless day, during the best sunshine hours, the atmosphere reduces the ground level potential irradiance to 865 watts per square meter. At ten percent efficiency, useable electrical energy output then is 86.5 watts per square meter. In the middle of January, same clear, cloudless day, etc., the atmosphere reduces the ground level potential irradiance to 300 watts per square meter. At ten percent efficiency only 30 watts of electrical energy output is available.
The storage problem created with nuclear waste has become enormous. One of the purposes of this invention is to provide a use for ionizing gamma and/or other radiation source waste. Technology exists for processing this ionizing radiation gamma and/or other source waste into concentrated energy sources of ionizing energy capable of generating a substantial number of photons and/or electrons, using an existing technology that builds solar cells for the space program. An electron generator like this invention could utilize a large percentage of the world's gamma and/or other radiation nuclear waste sitting in holding pools at reactors all over the world. Using the 6 to 7 Mev gamma and/or other radiation source being emitted by a typical nuclear reactor to ionize hydrogen atoms subjected to this ionization will produce a substantial amount of electrical horsepower without turning a single steam-driven generator.